It’s not occupied because Ehud Barak decided to “give peace a chance”, and to give the Palestinians pretty much what they asked for. He pulled Israel – and thousands of Israelis – out of Gaza and gave it to the Palestinians. The hope was that it’d be a first step on a road to a lasting peace.

And – nobody could have possibly seen this coming, honest – Hamas and Hezbollah played it as a sign of weakness and poured weapons into Gaza, and have been using it as a staging ground for wave after wave after wave of aggression.

Ilhan Omar sits on the House Foreign Relations committee.

(That was normally the part of the post where I’d try to write something pithy or scary. And I guess “scary” qualifies).

While I agree with Sarah Hoyt that crimes against taste shouldn’t literally be prosecuted as crimes, and here in the US there might even be a First Amendment issue (justifiably so), I’ll admit I’m not gonna rip on the Poles too hard for this.

A US backed coup in Venezuela is not a solution to the dire issues they face. Trump’s efforts to install a far right opposition will only incite violence and further destabilize the region. We must support Mexico, Uruguay & the Vatican’s efforts to facilitate a peaceful dialogue.

She was basically parroting the Maduro regime line – that the Trump administration was imposing a “far right” government on the “democratically elected” government of Venezuela.

A congressman who isn’t actually an active disgrace to his state, Carlos Curbelo, responded:

.@jguaido is actually from a center left party. He supports human rights & the fair treatment of all people. He was also legitimately & democratically elected. You’d think a progressive would be a little more supportive. But no, the sick obsession w @realDonaldTrump is blinding https://t.co/Eh96qanAE4

Trump plans to withdraw the 2,000 US military members from Syria. Neo-Cons are upset. Defense Secretary Mattis is resigning. The establishment consensus is Trump is making a horrible mistake. Is he?George Washington warned against entangling alliances. That’s pretty good historical precedent for Trump to bring our troops home. Yes, the neo-cons reply, but the world has changed since Washington’s time. We need to police the world. Failing to do so is isolationist. Failing to fight every battle means people will die, nations will fall.So? The world, to Americans, means Christendom. True, that world has changed. Rome ruled for 500 hundred years before it fell. A thousand years later, England, France and Spain were the great powers; then the Axis Powers for a decade; then the nuclear nations calling themselves the Security Council; power constantly changing.But England is no longer a great power (despite having nuclear weapons). It contributes a few hundred people to each global conflict, not enough to tip the scale. As a power, they’re a has-been. So are France, Spain, Rome.We’re headed their direction. The economic and military domination we enjoyed after WW II is gone. We should stop pretending, stop over-extending. We should pull back to our own shores, fortify against the coming global crash, hope to ride out the long night while the rest of the world burns.Socialism is a disease and we’re facing an epidemic. The treatment for an epidemic is quarantine: save the ones you can, let the rest die. Isolation is not a bad thing for a nation, it’s the responsible thing. Put America First.Joe Doakes

I’m starting to think we’ll need that internally.

Build a wall around California, Illinois, and the mid-Atlantic states. And make them pay…

Hey, what’s the problem? Everyone residing in the community is affected by local government, we all have “skin in the game.” Why should the accident of birthplace give citizens special privileges not afforded to resident aliens, border jumpers, students who overstayed their visas and even tourists?

However you got here, you ARE here, so you should have a say in the rules you’re living under. Anything less would be un-American.

Joe Doakes

Take the Democrat approac to borders and the rights and privileges of citizenship to its logidal extreme and they really shouldn’t be barbering about Riussian “interference” in our elections, since the Russians have exactly the same rights as illegal Salvadorans have to steer our democracy.

[SCENE: Mitch BERG is at his county elections office getting an early primary voting packet. He looks around and notices Avery LIBRELLE walking in. He briefly considers fleeing out the fire exit, but just tries to make himself look small and inconspicuous. It doesn’t work.]

LIBRELLE: Merg! Donald Trump is a traitor!

BERG: No he’s not. We’re not at war with Russia.

LIBRELLE: Yes we are!

BERG: How do you figure? Be specific.

LIBRELLE: They’ve been attacking our society and election system.

BERG: They’ve been attacking our society and election system since the 1930’s – ours and every one in Western Europe, with a brief break during the early nineties, maybe.

LIBRELLE: Espionage is a form of war.

BERG: Then we’re “at war” with every nation on earth, including all of our putative allies.

LIBRELLE: Merg! Merg! Trump’s performance in Helsinki was a threat to national security!

BERG: His press conference was a fairly awkward display of ego over common sense. But since you brought up national security, if you favor open borders…

Sgt. Major Saman Gunan wasn’t abiding by any orders when he joined the effort to rescue a boys soccer team trapped in a cave in northern Thailand. The 38-year-old retired Thai Navy SEAL did so by choice.

Gunan, who was working as a volunteer, passed out underwater during an overnight mission placing extra air tanks inside the cave, along the route divers use to reach the cavern where the 12 boys and their coach remain stranded and the oxygen in the air is depleting. He couldn’t be revived and was confirmed dead early Friday morning, according to Thai officials.

Gun control advocates insist that if we could have all firearms registered, and government permits for every transfer, then crime would be non-existent. Everyone would register their firearms, non-registered firearms would be confiscated, no guns on the street means no crime. Easy.

In the entire country of Mexico, there are only 3,153 firearms. That’s the total number registered for private individuals to legally own. I suspect that number does explain the violent crime rate in Mexico. But not the way gun controllers believe it does.

Joe doakes

And every decade or so, some of them figure it out, and move on to greener political pastures, to be replaced by a new generation that thinks they’ve discovered the holy grail with “common sense gun laws”.

Donald Truimp proposes to separate children of legal immigrants from their parents for 25 hours a week for instruction in American values – including traditions like Christmas, Easter, and of course fluency in English. Spokespeople for the proposal say that if immigrants won’t willingly assimilate to American life, they – or at least their next generation – should be forced to assimilate.

The proposal would also hike sentences for crimes committed in immigrant neighborhoods, and impose potential prison terms on parents who send their kids on extended trips back to the home culture for de-assimilation.

The left is rolling out its big guns against this latest Trump atrocity.

Daniel Kovalik, who teaches international human rights law at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, argues in a recent op-ed for The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that U.S. media coverage of Venezuela “ignores the fact” that the U.S. is the “greatest impediment to democracy” in Venezuela and “throughout Latin America.”

Kovalik asserts that the “true patriots” of Venezuela “resent” the “devastating economic sanctions” imposed by the U.S., claiming that a vote for current socialist President Nicolás Maduro “was a vote against U.S. meddling” in the country’s affairs.
“Venezuela’s electoral system…is an inspiring process that guarantees one person, one vote, and includes multiple auditing procedures to ensure a free and fair election,” Kovalik claims.

People who don’t understand Trump, don’t understand what he’s doing with Korea. There’s no written agreement. There’s no procedure for verification. We gave away too much and received too little. It’s a disaster!

Calm down. Trump is a real estate developer. This is standard operating procedure. Say anything, promise anything, to get the customer committed to the deal. After that, we hammer out the details. The final agreement may look nothing at all like the initial offer, but it’ll fly because we’re all committed to the deal.

Same technique as selling a used car. Go ahead, sit in it. Drive it around the block. Look at the great tread left on the tires. Feel the cushy seats. You look good in that car. You want it, don’t you? Why not, you deserve it. And the payments, so affordable. Can we do this? Sure, we can.

Trump took the first step at getting North and South committed to a deal, some deal, any deal, something to break the stalemate, something to take to their own people and claim as a victory. Hey Kim, maybe you’d like to own a hotel on the beach? Put your name up in lights? Sure, we can do that, as part of the deal. Ever eaten at McDonalds? Come on, every major city has a McDonalds. We’ve got to get your city into World Class, we’ve got to get you a McDonalds. Can we do this? Sure we can. All part of the deal . . . .

If I lived in London, I would start by writing a biography of every woman that was stabbed in the past year, now that London’s violent crime rate has surpassed New York City’s for the first time in history.

The killing comes on top of a deepening scandal and calls for a full-blown parliamentary investigation over allegations that civil servants may have granted asylum to as many as 1,000 migrants in exchange for money — and that some of those migrants may have been criminals or even terrorism suspects.

What? A smothering “benevolent” social welfare state nurtures corruption?

I’m going to have to absorb this for a bit.

The murder suspect, identified as Ali Bashar, a 20-year-old Iraqi, arrived in Germany in October 2015, shortly after Ms. Merkel opened the borders to hundreds of thousands of migrants. He was rejected in late 2016, but was allowed to stay in the country while his appeal was pending.

“If he had been deported, she would still be alive,” read a headline in the country’s largest tabloid, Bild, which devoted two pages to the case.

He came to the attention of the police several times, involving allegations of jostling a police officer, robbing a passer-by and carrying a knife.

Why, it’s almost as if letting hundreds of thousands of people into cultures like Germany and France and Sweden that are culturally unadapted to assimilating people (even if they want to be assimilated).

There is a Roman Empire-like sameness throughout Europe in fashion, popular culture, and government protocol — a welcome change from the deadly fault lines of 1914 and 1939.

Yet, as in the waning days of Rome, there is a growing uncertainly beneath the European calm.

The present generation has inherited the physical architecture and art of a once-great West — cathedrals, theaters, and museums. But it seems to lack the confidence that it could ever create the conditions to match, much less exceed, such achievement.

The sense of depression in Europe reminds one of novelist J. R. R. Tolkien’s description of the mythical land of Gondor in his epic fantasy The Lord of the Rings. Gondor’s huge walls, vaunted traditions, and rich history were testaments that it once served as bulwark of a humane Middle-earth.

When they were a collection of smallish, ethnically and culturally homogenous statelets, they had something going for them (other than the whole “going to war with each other every generation or more” thing).

But the thing about European cultures is, you can never “become” French, or Norwegian, or Dutch; those societies are defined by language, history and ethnicity (even polyglot Switzerland). Combine that with being in demographic death spirals (at least those countries west of the German/Polish border) and importing millions of people, first “guest workers” and later refugees to fill in the demographic gaps, workers who can never be truly assimilated into their respective societies…

…and all that placid homogeneity that allowed Swedish and Dutch and French society to actually be Swedish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, whatever, is all by the boards.

And then, the best they can hope for is to become occasionally fractious, like we do. The worst?

The same thing that always happens when one culture drowns in another.

Over at Power Line, Paul Mirengoff asks a question that is redolent with parallels for anyone that lives in a Democrat-dominated area: if a government is truly authoritarian, nobody wants to be pegged as a “Resister” – for example, to be placed on an “enemies list”.

If you’re on an enemies list in a genuinely authoritarian country – Franco’s Spain, Pinochet’s Chile, Argentina in the sixties and seventies – being an “enemy” meant midnight knocks on the door and cars snatching people off streets and goons hauling off classrooms full of college kids.

In the parts of the US that voted for Hillary and melted down when Trump won, “resistance” means a latte in the morning after pilates, before a vigorous session of screaming at people on Twitter.

Mirengoff looks at “authoritarian” (according to the current leftist whinging) Hungary:

The Washington Post reports that a pro-government newspaper in Hungary published an “enemies list.” Political opponents of prime minister Viktor Orban promptly expressed outrage at not being on the list.

One of them launched a petition demanding to be on the list. He invited others to join in that demand. Nearly 8,000 did.

This tells me that Orban’s government is not authoritarian. The Post eventually concedes as much. Deep into the story, it acknowledges that in Hungary “there is free expression, with opponents speaking out on television, newspapers, and on the streets.” Earlier this month, when the new, elected parliament was sworn in, thousands of opponents rallied against Orban just outside the building.

Trying to get Hungarians to stop expressing freely takes tanks, as the Soviets found.

Liberals in the media are exercised because nearly every newspaper and media outlet in Hungary supports Orban (occording to journalists who oppose Orban and who aren’t, as it happens either unemployed or in jail). In other words, for being the same as the American media, but on the right…

I hope Trump responds by announcing that the wise policies put in place by President Truman to rebuild Europe after WW II have succeeded beyond all expectations. European nations have demonstrated they are fully capable of managing their own affairs wherefore we intend to serve notice that we’re withdrawing from NATO. American military commanders will be preparing a timetable for orderly withdrawal of troops and equipment with plans for redeployment along our southern border. We congratulate our European friends and former allies and wish them a bright and prosperous future.

Joe Doakes

There’s a part of me that hopes Trump drops that on the likes of Merkel.

Of course, it’s the likes of Estonia and Poland that’d end up suffering when the pusillanimous central European powers cave in in the face of Russia bullying.

Donald Trump’s October 24, 1999 Meet the Pressinterview with Tim Russert is a historically illuminating flash forward to the most surprising, promising and history-altering opportunity since the Soviet Union collapsed: “denuclearizing” North Korea without the could-be belligerents waging a hideously destructive war that scars East Asia and seeds a global economic depression…In the interview, Russert says Trump once indicated if he were president he would attack North Korea preemptively in order to end its nuclear threat.

On March 5, remarkable news broke: North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un said he is willing to discuss denuclearizing his regime. He made no demand on South Korea and the U.S., other than that they meet to discuss the subject face to face. The South Korean delegation that met with him in Pyongyang indicated Kim said he understood South Korean and American joint military drills would continue. That was a major concession. For decades the Communist state’s propagandists have portrayed allied military exercises as preparations for an invasion of the North. In exchange for negotiations, the Kim regime would demand the allies suspend exercises. Not this time. Moreover, the dictatorship also agreed to halt its provocative nuclear weapons and missile tests while talks continue.

Why, it’s almost as if Winston Churchill was right all along; the only thing tyrants and bullies understand is strength.

Go figure.

I’m proudly on record as a Trump skeptic – but between Gorsuch, his cabinet, his deregulatory frenzy, and the unspooling, unprecedented changes in Saudi Arabia (and its various clients) and now the Korean Peninsula, I’m warming up to at least the foreign policy side of The Donald.

Last week, TheBlaze reported the number of murders in London, a traditionally safe city, surpassed the number of murders in New York City in February and March for the first time in modern history. The murders were mostly carried out in stabbing attacks with knives.

What is Khan doing?
In response to the spike in crime, Khan deployed over 300 additional London police officers to the city’s most crime-ridden neighborhoods to stop and search anyone they suspect is carrying a knife. In the U.S., such policies are very controversial and possibly violate the Fourth Amendment, but in England, police are able to stop and search anyone they suspect is carrying a knife.

The results? The same sort of security theater that happens every time government tries to treat not the disease, not even the symptoms, but the tools involved in the symptoms (and, in the UK’s case, the very act of defending yourself from the disease). It’s like treating flu by banning vomit.

And when I say “security theater”, I’m not speaking imprecisely at all:

So after decades of dictatorial posturing, perhaps the number of knives available to criminals will drop (as Britons gnaw on food they can’t cut, or start buying their awful British food pre-cut for them). That‘ll solve crime right?

Nonsense. Criminals will start taping nails onto long sticks, or carrying socks full of five pence pieces. And when the UK government gans nails and coins, they’ll switch to pointed sticks. And when pointed sticks are finally off the streets, it’ll be rocks and pavers and fists and feet.

Britian keeps this “mind”-set up, they’ll all be legless, armless, immobile consumption machines in a few centuries.

Whatever we do, America must NOT send any aid. That would be imperialist aggression. It would be interfering in their chosen culture. Zimbabwean Blacks wanted out from under the White Man’s thumb, wanted to be independent and stand on their own. They insisted they were ready to manage their own affairs, learn from their mistakes. Who are we to judge the results?

Similarly, if South African Blacks want to take back their country and run it themselves – without any outside interference – then we ought to be fully supportive. Go right ahead. You’re on your own.

As for the White farmers who are losing their lands, well, I hear it’s nice in Australia. Might want to move before the necklacing begins.

Joe Doakes

I’m tempted to say the same thing whenever I heard about “Democratically”-elected governments destroying their own nations – see Venezuela and Bolivia along with Zimbabwe and South Africa.

We warned you – but you did it anyway. Fix it yourselves. Still feel good, sticking it to the Yanqui?

I do advocate tolerance. Most notably and recently, I’ve mixed it up with activists in the MN GOP who’ve said there’s no room in the Republican party for people of the Muslim faith, because – this is a paraphrase cut so closely it might as well be a quote – the Koran tells Muslims to deceive the infidel, and all Muslims follow the Koran to the letter in exactly the same way. And their goal is to spread Sharia law everywhere. Even in the MN GOP.

Of course, they – and I – say Muslims, and all immigrants, should assimilate into our culture (and, for my part, that “multiculturalism” must be killed with fire). To which I respond “What on earth is more assimilatory than trying to attend a Minnesota GOP caucus?”

Some of them have gone so far as to say there’s no room for people who are inclusive of Muslims (not Islam, mind you – they they gotta support the rest of the GOP’s platform and, of course, the US) and them. To which I’ve replied “don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out”.